1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to providing network based services, and more specifically to providing the services simultaneously via a data center and a cloud network.
2. Description of the Related Art
The use of computers and computer network based services has proliferated in many aspects of modern society. The most fascinating computer network is the Internet, which allows data such as messages, files, pictures videos, and the like, to be transmitted almost instantly anywhere in the world. The Internet has also spurred economic activity by allowing modern organizations to provide goods and services to previously unreachable customers. To support an Internet based business, an organization typically maintains one or more data centers. A data center is a centralized repository that may provide for storage, management, and dissemination of data associated with a particular organization. A data center may include one or more servers and other computer equipment which may support the activities of an organization. For example, the servers in a data center may include applications and databases that allow customers to purchase products and services via the Internet.
As the volume of business conducted over the Internet continues to grow at an exponential rate, modern organizations have to purchase more and more computer equipment to support the large volume of transactions, and to ensure the reliability of their network based services. However, maintaining and continuously expanding large data centers may prove to be expensive, and may also distract an organization's focus from its core business activities.
To avoid maintaining a data center, many modern organizations have turned to cloud computing. Cloud computing allows a user to use resources, primarily servers, owned by a third party provider, such that the user does not need to make substantial investment in computer hardware. Cloud computing provides dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources as a service over a network such as the Internet. Organizations using cloud computing can avoid capital expenditures by renting hardware, software, and services and paying a third party cloud computing service provider for only the resources that are used.
However, to reap the benefits of cloud computing, organizations with existing data centers will generally have to migrate data and services provided via the data center to the cloud before the existing data centers can be shut down.